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I have too many freckles to get to know any of them individually and yet I can't say I love all of them equally. There are three in particular that bug me every summer when they come out of winter hibernation. This year, however, I am getting the better of them with the newly formulated Your Best Face Restore ($120 in the TIA store), a potion to smooth skin tone and decrease hyperpigmentation and scarring.

The offending freckles are above my right eye, just below my eyebrow, with the other two on the bridge of my nose. I have even known people point (with good intentions, of course) and tell me I have a mark/smudge/something embarrassing before peering more closely and exclaiming "Oh, it's just a freckle". Really? I had no idea. After about six weeks of using YBF's Restore, my freckles are fading and I now defy anyone to hallucinate smudges. A more stubborn age spot is going to take a lot longer, but I am just beginning to detect results.

Restore has a smell like birthday cake that I absolutely adore. Actually, it is almond from the spin trap, a busy little molecule that is YBF's signature ingredient. Spin trap scurries about (or at least that's how I imagine it) tracking down free radicals and stopping them in their tracks before they spin out of control and cause damage. But what my freckles are likely responding to is the combination of a high end, stable vitamin C and alpha arbutin. In this new formula, YBF has boosted the amount of alpha arbutin, which works by blocking tyrosinase, the enzymes that ultimately make melanin happen.

There is also niacin and, as Cristina pointed out in a recent comment, there can be some bad interactions between niacin and vitamin C. Therefore, I thought  it worthwhile to repeat YBF's explanation: "There may be some negative play between niacin and traditional vitamin C (ascorbic acid) both being water soluble. It’s like two alpha kids in the same sandbox not getting along. In our line, the vitamin C we use is oil soluble, so when partnered with niacin there is synergy between the two. Niacin actually helps to speed the brightening process by reducing inflammation, partnering with the other water soluble ingredients such as B5 and Alpha Arbutin. It also helps regulate the skin from becoming too oily or breakout prone."

Before finishing up, I should give a call out to lipochroman-6, an able scavenger of RNS as well as ROS. According to Lipotec, who makes lipochronan-6, it does a significantly better job of fending off oxidative stress than resveratrol, the antioxidant component of grapes.

Now that YBF has doubled the size of the bottle for the same price, I don't need to confine use to micro-targeting the odd freckle. Restore is great at making the skin look refreshed and has now become my staple night cream.

Ingredients revised formula:

Reverse osmosis water, ascorbyl tetraisopalmitate (vitamin c), alpha arbutin, ppg5 ceteth-20, vitamin B5, dimethyl isosorbide, niacin, spin trap (phenyl butyl nitrone), vitamin e, c10-30 alkyl acrylate crosspolymer, sodium hyaluronate, polysorbate-20, Lipochroman-6 (dimethylmethoxy chromanol), triethanolamine, paraben du

Ingredients previous formula:

Reverse osmosis water, alpha arbutin, c10-30 alkyl acrylate crosspolymer, sodium hyaluronate, ppg-5 ceteth-20, ascorbyl tetraisopalmitate, spin trap (phenyl butyl nitrone), provitamin B5, paraben du, triethanolamine, polysorbate 20, vitamin e